


as close as we're gettin' to a true romance

by freeal



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 15:45:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18577564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freeal/pseuds/freeal
Summary: An alternate ending for DMC3.





	as close as we're gettin' to a true romance

**Author's Note:**

> Title from She Wants Revenge's True Romance.
> 
> Some leftover thoughts from another fic I need to get off my chest. It's very bareboned, incredibly dull, and simply doesn't make sense.  
> Nothing particularly shippy but I wrote it with a shipper's bleeding heart so there's that.
> 
> Nobody is themselves. English is not my language.

Vergil is dreaming.

Consciously, he knows that he's still standing on top of Temen-ni-gru, towering over a world to which he pays no mind. Or at least, not anymore. He can feel Arkham's depraved gaze sliding against his back, slithery and venomous like a snake.

A lucid dream. How curious.

Vergil thinks he will indulge himself for a moment, before his brother reaches the playground he carefully chose for the occasion.

The landscape in his dream is dark and airless. A dungeon, perhaps. Vergil's eyes have adjusted promptly, taking in the surroundings while he explores at a leisurely pace.

Much to Vergil's disappointment, there's little to explore, whilst the place is larger than he has initially thought. It looks dangerously like the Underworld his books depict. Boundless nowhere of wreckage and desolation. Upon a cracked piece of marble, a lone statue of a knight is standing vigil loyally, yet pointlessly, over this land of no man, holding a broad sword in its hands.

Without much else to do, Vergil approaches to examine the sword—heavy and sharp, intricate veins sprawling across its wide blade like rotten roots.

Suddenly, the veins begin to glow and the blade ignites in heatless blue flame. "You have arrived." A grating sound rings out from the inside of the statue.

"What are you?" Vergil says without flinching. He regards the motionless statue evenly, "A golem?"

"This is but a cage, and I'm but a prisoner, held for no crime except my own weakness." The man in the statue responds in a hollow voice. "But I will become my prison, eventually, for none is beyond infinite torture."

Vergil raises one pale eyebrow at that. "You don't look, nor sound, very tortured to me." He says.

"Do I not?" The man asks quietly. "Then perhaps I'm indeed corrupted beyond redemption."

"And that's not my concern," Vergil says sternly. "Enough of this foolishness. State your name."

"They call me Nelo Angelo, a name I know is not mine." The man replies, his absent-mindedness undisturbed by Vergil's harsh tone. "But I think I will call myself by this name as well, if given time."

"Nelo Angelo," Vergil repeats slowly, the strange name stinging his tongue like a poisoned needle. All of a sudden he's feeling restless. "Very well, Nelo Angelo. For what did you summon me to this realm?" Vergil squints. "What do you want?"

The caged man is trying to lift his head, the heavy armour around him creaks and shrieks agonisingly under his struggle. Then Vergil finds himself looking into two pupilless red orbs. He sees a shadow of himself drowning in a pool of blood, three menacing eyes arching with energy lording overhead like a bad omen. A chill runs down his spine, threatening to break the confidence he has been building towards the completion of his plan.

And the man says, "I want to die." [1]

 

 

 

\- "I'm sure you have time for one more game, right?" 

\- "Why not? Afterall we share the same blood..."

 

 

 

"But what's the matter? You said you will kill me if you had to. Why are you hesitating?"

Vergil is kneeling on the ground, smiling through a mouth full of bloody teeth and Dante thinks something isn't right.

"I'm not 'hesitating'," Dante says, pointing Rebellion at him, another hand making a haphazard air quote, "You lost so you don't get to make the rule."

A vicious expression flashes across Vergil's smooth countenance. "I've been defeated. Yes, indeed." He confirms solemnly, letting out a heavy breath, holding the wound at his side with one hand. It's still not closing. His blood is mixing with the water, running down the precipice like a long red ribbon. "But we're playing my game."

Dante casts a sidelong glance at him, resting rebellion on one shoulder. He shrugs.

"All right. Tell me then, brother, what have I won?"

"The true power of Sparda." Vergil says, standing up, "The other half of it, to be specific."

"Which is?"

"My blood."

Dante pauses his casual gait. Something's definitely not right.

"What I'll even be doing with your blood?"

"You will drink it," Vergil states plainly, dropping Force Edge on the ground like he hasn't been clutching it with murderous intent. "All of it."

"Ew," Dante says.

But Vergil is levelling him with an icy look in his eyes, beginning to walk towards him, loosening the cravat around his neck and discarding it without a care.

"You can't be fucking serious," Dante says incredulously, drops Rebellion's tip to the floor, the metal clashes at the stone with a loud ting. He begins to pace like a caged beast. 

His brother has finally lost it, Dante decides after a moment, deranged over his thirst for power. And he thinks, with a sadistic humour, that it's never, never a good idea, to spend too much time with a middle-aged librarian, who is also a part-time clown.

A Sparda doesn't fear pain or death, it's plain and simple. But killing one's own kin and sucking his blood for power? That is a whole new story. Dante is feeling nauseous already thinking about it, and let's be honest, he's never been one queasy about blood.

"Have you heard of a little ol' thing called consent?" Dante says as Vergil stops in front of him, "Go fix your blood kink somewhere else Vergil, I'm not into it."

Vergil is looking at him again with that look in his eyes. Like Dante's being unreasonable and ridiculous. Like he doesn't know what's good for him.

"It will make you strong." He says, as if it explains anything.

"And what am I doing with that much power? Is there a throne I'm supposed to succeed to that nobody told me about?" Dante yells, throwing his hands in the air, "It's you who's obsessed with power. Has always been you. I may be wild, and a little bit of crazy, but I'm not a fucking nut job like you!"

"Listen to me, _little brother_ ," Vergil sizes his jaw in one fluid motion, forcing Dante to look him in the eyes. His fingers are slippery and cold with his own blood on Dante's skin. "This, is not, a choice." He spits out each word like a hailstone.

"You can't do this." Dante is laughing now, disbelievingly, desperately, "You think you can make me do this but you can't."

"What exactly," says Vergil haughtily, "do you think I'm doing?"

 _Sacrifice_. Dante thinks, almost startled by his own thought. It's the most absurd idea, even to Dante's battle heated mind. Utterly inconceivable, that his prideful brother would surrender himself like a helpless lamb, to a god he knows that they both resent.

A god who simply doesn't care.

Vergil is sliding his hands down to Dante's neck, closing his fingers around his throat, pressing mercilessly into the pulsing vein, regarding Dante like a prey. "Or, you can concede your place, and I will consume you instead." He tells him, the cruel spikes in his nasal voice cutting relentlessly. "With your blood, I will live."

"We'll both live if you could just get off your own ass and _heal_." Dante mumbles.

"Have you any idea what's waiting ahead? What it will take to survive?" Vergil snaps, baring his teeth at Dante, coughing out even more blood with each syllable of his words.

"No. This will not do." He mutters, shaking his head, and doesn't bother with wiping away the blood. "One way or another, Dante, the entirety of Sparda's power is needed. If you won't take it, then I will. Know that I won't hesitate."

Vergil is talking like it's a specific thing and it's suspicious. Dante squirms uncomfortably under his hands. "Dude, what are you even talking about?"

But the moment has passed. "Fight me with this and ruin us both, or accept the simple truth." Vergil says, his frigid calmness restored, "There will only be one of us leaving here alive, Dante. As it always should have been."

Without a warning, Vergil is strangling Dante. His long fingers covered in gloves now two massive claws covered in cold scales and boney spikes. Dante's windpipe is crushed immediately, his cervical vertebrae fractured with a single snap.

 _Shit_. Dante thinks.

The injury is healing rapidly but Dante cannot breathe. Blood is boiling in his head and making everything red and hazy. Dante is triggering uncontrollably, with fangs in his mouth and a savage hunger craving fresh blood. He kicks and strikes, the iron grip doesn't budge. He drives Rebellion into Vergil's unhealed wound, Vergil doesn't even blink. He twists the blade around, all he gets in return is a bleeding chuckle.

"You accepted the invitation." Vergil is saying, "You played my game."

_Now claim your prize._

Dante bites down on Vergil's neck, where the flesh is most tender and veins bare.

The skin yields without resistance and Dante's mouth is filled instantly with the familiar tang of blood. The deadly pressure disappeared and Vergil's hands, once again soft with skin and tanned leather, are now resting at the nape of Dante's neck, loosely cradling his head.

Dante wants to vomit. He will vomit even his entrails out if it means getting rid of this taste of Vergil's blood in his mouth. There's no taste more disgusting than this and Dante had bathed in demon blood and tasted one-month-old pizza.

But instead he bites and chews and swallows, drinking down his brother's blood with bits of his skin and flesh. _His own flesh and blood_ , Dante thinks with maddening resentment but he doesn't stop. He can't, because Vergil is another half of Dante and he knows him too well. Dante fell head-on into his trap. There's no hope of winning.

The game was played and Vergil has won.

Vergil is quiet—too quiet. He doesn't flinch from the pain, doesn't even make a single sound. Dante would assume his brother is effectively dead, if not for the faint vibration he's feeling through fingers gripping at the hilt of Rebellion, as shallow breathes entering and exiting Vergil's damaged lungs.

Dante dares not to retrieve Rebellion from Vergil, knowing too well the blood will be wasted for nought. Instead he presses into the sharp edge jutting out of Vergil's chest, holding him close and burying himself into the pain.

He releases Vergil hesitantly, at last, sensing the blood flow from the artery is stopping. The trigger has ended. His whole face feels wet and caked with blood, some of which has already dried, flaking like rust.

Vergil is still conscious, which is quite a miracle in itself, albeit as white as a sheet of paper. A ghastly sight against all the blood around him. He's frowning slightly, looking unnaturally tired. His severe eyes a pair of dull glass beads, glazing over without focus.

"Are you happy now, Vergil?" Dante chews out his words nastily, "That I have finally become a kin-killer that dabbles in vampirism?" He's holding Vergil's shoulders with a strength that can crush bones as if still wanting to shake him out of his delirious thought. "Mother would've been so proud of us, don't you think?" He says cruelly, hoping to sting his brother as badly as he can, make him feel a fragment of torture Dante is experiencing.

But there is not a single sign of pain or grievance on Vergil's dying form. "Use my strength wisely, Dante," He merely says, if a bit stiffly, "for there won't be anyone else to keep you in check."

Suddenly, Vergil smiles, as the bitter realisation hits him, not with a bang but a whimper.

"No wonder my attainment of power is incomplete." Ruefully, he muses, closing his weary eyes at last.

Without another word, Vergil draws Yamato from its sheath and penetrates them both with its silver blade. The last of his blood gushes out straight from his pierced heart, pouring into Dante's wound along the length of Yamato and was absorbed instantly. He wills his heart to beat faster, to squeeze out the last drop of its crimson fluid, but feels it failing inevitably, beating slower and slower...and slower.

Dante shivers.

The body against him is cold, drained of all blood—the same blood that is burning through his veins like magma, mixing with his own. For a long while, Dante doesn't move, the freezing blades of Rebellion and Yamato inside him the only connection he has with the world, holding the Sparda twins together for one last moment. One last fatal embrace.

The ground shakes violently around them, the portal is closing.

Time to let go.

Dante gathers the swords and stares at Vergil's lifeless body falling and disappearing into a mere dot. He turns on his heels then jumps.

It's a long way down. Dante gazes at the approaching Human World pointlessly, air friction is burning his skin but it can't compare with the blood that is running through his inside.

Both of Dante and Vergil's blood are running painfully through him and Dante knows that he can do anything with this kind of power. It feels like how he imagines being born—without a warning, let alone a choice, he is presented with this long blankness of a lifetime and a whole new world of nowhere to go. Dante wants to scream at the world for being too much as well as cry at it for not giving him enough, just like every newborn infant, twisting their tender face into the most hideous grimace, just so they can seize a bit of solace, when they can do absolutely nothing else.

So he does. Because this feels like being reborn.

Only this time, he's whole, and alone.

 

 

End

**Author's Note:**

> [1] Satyricon, Petronius: For I myself saw the Sibyl indeed at Cumae with my own eyes hanging in a jar; and when the boys used to say to her, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she replied, 'I want to die."  
> This was quoted in Eliot's The Waste Land as its epigraph in Latin and Greek.


End file.
